New associate professor will raise Danish drone research to new heights

Erdal Kayacan – Ph.D. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Boğaziçi University, Istanbul – is a new associate professor at the Department of Engineering in Aarhus University. The main focus of Dr. Kayacan’s research is guidance, navigation and control of aerial robots.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous robots are at the heart of the upcoming fourth industrial revolution. Not a day goes by where these two concepts aren’t mentioned in almost every major daily newspaper.

Research and development in the information technology field have been intense for decades, but they have never been more crucial than now. Pretty much every leading technology corporation is heavily involved in the world of AI and robotics. Why?

To make things work autonomously.

That is precisely why the Department of Engineering at Aarhus University has appointed Erdal Kayacan as a new associate professor in robotics. His expertise in autonomous systems will help raise advanced research and development in aerial robotics and AI-based control to new levels at Aarhus University.

"This is the age of robotics and AI. For the next ten years, the transformative influence of robotics and AI will immensely impact our daily lives. European countries are investing heavily in these technologies, and Denmark is also one of the top ten worldwide when it comes to robotics and AI startups," says Associate Professor Kayacan, and he continues:

"I might say that I feel extremely fortunate that there is growing interest in my research field. Something is definitely stirring in this area, and it’s easy to attract the attention of the younger generation for these technologies. Think about the results of such motivation for a second. After learning the required skills for today’s sophisticated robots, students will be able to apply these skills to almost anything for the future’s technologies."

Dr. Kayacan was born and raised in Turkey. He received a B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from Istanbul Technical University in Turkey in 2003. Then, he obtained an M.Sc. degree in Systems and Control Engineering from Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey in 2006. He earned his PhD degree in electrical and electronic engineering at Boğaziçi University in 2011. Later, he moved to Belgium for post-doctoral research in KU Leuven, at the Division of Mechatronics, Biostatistics and Sensors (MeBioS), where he worked on autonomous tractors for over two years. Then, he worked for four years in Nanyang Technological University, Singapore at the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering as an assistant professor.

Besides working with aerial robotics, he has developed a prototype autonomous ground robot for post quality assessment of buildings in a project that was later handed over to a startup for commercialization.

Dr Kayacan is a co-author of the course book “Fuzzy Neural Networks for Real Time Control Applications, 1st Edition Concepts, Modeling and Algorithms for Fast Learning“, Butterworth-Heinemann, Print Book ISBN:9780128026878. (17 Sept 2015). He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Since 1 January 2017, he has been an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems.